


Gordon and Todd, Private Eyes, Starring In: Once Upon a Murderous Hedge

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Bat Detective Agency, Gen, I had way too much fun with this, forgive me Batman, forgive me world, jokey fake-noir detective shenanigans, this definitely isn't intended to be taken too seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-25 18:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9839522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Gotham City was dark and strange in that dimension – no darker and stranger than usual, I suppose, but “dark” specifically in the way an old black and white movie might be, all full of fluttering shadows and grim, staring alleys that looked just like ink stains… “Strange” the way said movie might be if it shuddered and crackled into static or a pale white screen every now and again, with whole bits of dialogue occasionally overwritten by ominous music.  Yeah, it was like that, like a dim old low-budget black and white movie on a shoddy projector in a room all full of dust and water stains.This Gotham was a Gotham just made for the business of private eye-ing, and the office of Gordon and Todd – Barbara and Jason, if you bought them fancy enough whiskey – was busy doing just that.





	1. The Seed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CytosineSkald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CytosineSkald/gifts).



> Hey there! My friend CytosineSkald is great at writing really vivid and dramatic mysteries, and this was written to amuse her. It is NOT a serious mystery, though. It is... Shamelessly Jokey Noir Batman Shenanigans, Not Intended for Serious Consumption Under Any Circumstances. Just please know that it was written with love -- for the original source material, the concept of ridiculousness and of course for my dear friend who knocks actual mysteries out of the park. 
> 
> So! I hope you like it. :)

Gotham City was dark and strange in that dimension – no darker and stranger than usual, I suppose, but “dark” specifically in the way an old black and white movie might be, all full of fluttering shadows and grim, staring alleys that looked just like ink stains… “Strange” the way said movie might be if it shuddered and crackled into static or a pale white screen every now and again, with whole bits of dialogue occasionally overwritten by ominous music.  Yeah, it was like that, like a dim old low-budget black and white movie on a shoddy projector in a room all full of dust and water stains. 

This Gotham was a Gotham just made for the business of private eye-ing, and the office of Gordon and Todd – Barbara and Jason, if you bought them fancy enough whiskey – was busy doing just that. 

Sure, most every Gotham had a Batman hunting the shadows, prying up the floorboards to let loose all the spiders and clean out all the rot.  Sure.  But most of those Batmen didn’t get into the game with trench coats on over their bat themed armor – they didn't wear fedoras with little holes cut out for the bat ears on their cowls. 

This Gotham City, we might say, was dark and strange in some very specific and, perhaps, troubling ways.

The World’s Greatest Detective had, you see, quite literally spawned the World’s Greatest Detective Agency. 

We join our inquisitive detecting heroes on an evening just like any other.  Gotham crawled with just as many creeping and suspicious shadows as there had been roaches crawling all over the Gordon and Todd detective office that one time _someone_ (Todd) had left half a pulled pork sandwich splattered across some case files overnight. 

Some of the creeping and suspicious shadows pirated movies on their laptops.  Some of them looted jewelry stores with convenient, enormous windows facing out towards the street.  Some of them even grabbed hold of poor, unsuspecting people’s bones and yanked them right out of their bodies to make pretty clattering bone wind chimes, and didn’t that just make the most awful mess? 

Gordon and Todd were ready for it all.   If they weren’t, who would be?

Well.

Aside from the rest of the Bat Detective Agencies scattered across town.

Ahem.

I.

The Seed

"Found us a case," Jason Todd muttered, words coming out sort of smushed given that he was talking around a cigarette.   The damn thing wasn’t even lit.  Todd’s hands shook just the tiniest bit, always, ever since the _incident_.  He laughed when Gordon said his smiles looked like a threat, nowadays - it wouldn't be any good to let her see how that hurt him.  He wore his hat low, casting heavy shadows over his eyes.  People called him the Red Hood, because apparently he wore a red hat out of protest, a red hat to carry a case gone sour with him for all time.  It was difficult to tell, given that everything was still a grainy black and white movie deal.  His hat looked, for all intents and purposes, like a lightish shade of grey.  And it wasn’t even a _hood_ , for crissakes. 

"You didn't find any case," Gordon corrected, snickering.  She had to remember to take off her Gotham City Library nametag every day before reporting for detective duty, or her secret identity would surely be leaked to the public.  She had a frank, authoritative way of talking, and had memorized nearly the entire internet.  She’d worked with Todd ever since, well… Ever since Detective Batman had said she had to keep the boy in line, alright?  "We got an email this morning - on the joint account, no less. I actually responded before you."

"Dame's hysterical," Todd noted, sympathetically.  He slipped his unlit cigarette out of his mouth and, noticing how soggy it had gotten, flicked it towards the trashcan.  It missed.  

Gordon raised her eyebrows, and waited.

"Fine. Our client sounds really worried."  Jason was a good guy, in the end.  Sort of.  He was definitely decent enough at detecting things like “Who Beat the Shit out of Those Guys over There?” or “Did Mr. Freeze Really Just Ice-Zap an Entire Water Park for Some Absurd Reason?”  … As he would’ve had to be, growing up with the mini-notepads and pocket flasks full of juice bestowed upon every Detective Robin.  Still, even before the _incident_ Todd had tended to go into jobs guns blazing, far more likely to jump to the conclusion, _“The Joker did it, and we should definitely try to shoot him,”_ than, say, someone else who actually relished the detecting part of their trade and thought a delicate, sneaky touch was required to keep the city safe.  And, you know, avoid unnecessary shootings.  Detective Batman himself never used a gun – he was literally the first private eye ever to carry weaponized bat-shaped business cards.       

"Better," Gordon conceded, pinning her long, lightish grey – copper? – hair up into a low, classy bun at the nape of her neck.  It would fit just great beneath her brooding bat-fedora. 

“Are we seriously gonna take a case from Poison Ivy?”  Todd sounded baffled.  “I mean, sure, she signed her e-mail ‘Pamela Isley,’ so I know she’s trying to play nice and all, but… Still.”

“Still,” Gordon agreed.  “Well, I told her she could drop in sometime tonight, and we’d give her story a listen.”

“She’s wanted by the police.  Like.  All the police, including your dad.  Did you hear about the latest murder, even?  With the eyeball just, just dripping off the chandelier and onto his shoe?  Twisted stuff.”  Todd popped another cigarette in his mouth and waggled it up and down on his lip.  “ _Twisted_ stuff.  Like, literally, there were plants twisted around everything – individual bones, and, and the furniture, and the pizza they were eating for dinner….”

Barbara sighed deeply, and took a swig from the flask she kept tucked into her snappy trench coat.  There was actually coffee inside – it was beyond irresponsible to drink on the job.  “She says that’s what she wants to talk about,” she offered.  “She says it wasn’t her.”

“Don’t they all, though?” Todd cigarette-mumbled, and the screen that was the world faded to an expectant, flickering blackness, which meant he had to have something of a point.  


	2. The Vine

By the time the world lit itself back up again, the music drifting back in like a newspaper caught by the wind, the nefarious Poison Ivy was already knocking on Gordon and Todd’s office door.  She had legs that went all the way up – as compared to some of those Gothamites with legs that also served as fleshy portals to unholy dimensions – and her lips were painted up pretty with the kind of lipstick that could control minds.  She’d brought Harley Quinn along with her, hanging off her arm and chirpily recounting some story Gordon and Todd thought sounded a little too much like a heist.  Something about, _“But when the springy arms busted through the wall, the elasticity goop started leaking out, and you know how strong that stuff can be…”_ Before Poison Ivy held up a long gloved finger against Harley’s lips, and the winsome clown pecked it with a kiss.   

That all might’ve been sweet stuff, in a different town, or maybe a different dimension.  In a different – and significantly less jaded –Bat Detective Office. 

Gordon let the criminal lovebirds in with some professional pleasantries Todd usually found kind of irrelevant.  “Cold out there, isn’t it?”  Barbara said.  “Awful lot of searchlights for this early in the night, wouldn’t you say?”  She ushered Poison Ivy and Harley over to their desk, and wheeled her own ergonomic swivel chair over to the other side so they’d both have a place to sit.  Her chair was significantly less stained with hot sauce and dried Silly Putty than Jason’s, and she was just the kind of girl to offer her seat up to a client… Or a client’s giggling harlequin girlfriend, as the case may be.   Sometimes Todd wondered when the city would break Barbara, make her as hardboiled as he very clearly was.  Fix her up with her own equivalent of a red hat that looked kind of light grey to everybody no matter how red you _fundamentally knew_ it was supposed to be, see? 

But that was Barbara for you.  She’d chosen this life – maybe she was the first one outside of the Bat himself who actually had.  She’d made her first private eye-ing fedora out of a modified pair of school uniform slacks.  It had been really something.  The first quasi-official detective hat with a working zipper.

“You’re not as forever-angry as Detective Batman,” Harley confided, tossing Gordon a wink she only just caught, given that the pretty little clown was spinning around and around in her ergonomic swivel chair.  “His office doesn’t even have chairs.  Or windows.  And it’s at the bottom of a well… B-Y-O-L.  Bring Your Own Ladder.”

“We do things a little differently here,” Barbara said, pulling an unnecessary printed copy of Poison Ivy’s e-mail out of one of her seemingly endless files.  “Maybe you should start at the beginning, Ms. Isley.  Just why should we help you?  What are you hoping to get from us, exactly?” 

Everybody watched Poison Ivy for a moment – the background music thrummed with a quiet suspense.  Ivy stared down at her hands, fiddling with her gloves, clearing her throat.  She wasn’t playing the damsel, Gordon could have told you.  She was a methodical one. She was sorting her words. 

Harley Quinn twirled one of her long, bouncy pigtails, and smacked bubblegum between her blurry white movie-screen teeth.  “It’s okay, Red,” she said gently.  “They’re supposed to be the good guys, or something.”

Todd snorted a little, as was his way.  Gordon waited with her pen poised over Poison Ivy’s printed-out e-mail, ready to take notes.       

“The last crime I committed was on April tenth, last year,” Poison Ivy said, voice clipped and soft.  “I stole Harley Quinn from the Joker, but in so doing I turned a fourth of downtown Gotham into one enormous web of rainforest vines.  A labyrinth, to swallow the Joker and all his gibbering cult.  Some people did…”  Poison Ivy swallowed, “ _Die_ , feeding my plants.  Attempting to escape my maze.  I have been in hiding since – tending all my gardens.”

“Mr. J’s maaaaaaaaad,” Harley giggled, and Todd couldn’t honestly tell how that idea made the clown-girl feel.  Her laughter was strangled, wound-up like a spring. 

“I couldn’t allow him to burn her with acid,” Poison Ivy said, lip curling with an abject disgust, “I couldn’t allow him to throw her out another window ever, ever again.”

“She loves me,” Harley confided.  “I think she really, really does!” 

“It does sound that way,” said Gordon, voice neutral.  “So you’re claiming the recent string of attacks committed using your methods, using plants touched with your DNA, _as proven by Detective Batman_ …  Are a set-up?  You’re claiming these people’s blood _isn’t_ on your hands?”

“Or vines,” Harley Quinn offered, ever helpful.  “Hands, or vines.  As the case may be.”

“I am,” Poison Ivy said.  She glanced up abruptly, and the world’s camera leaned shakily closer to her sharp, challenging eyes.  “Someone is setting me up, using my plants against me.  When have I ever sent vines creeping down the throats of innocent women?  When have I ever used thorns to crush the hearts of little girls?  You know I wouldn’t, detectives.”

“I mean, we don’t _know_ anything, yet,” Jason mumbled.  “But we’ll take the case.  Those plants – you’ve always said they’re like your family.  I know all too well what it’s like to be betrayed by what’s closest to you.”  Vague little hints at his hardcore, devastating backstory always made Todd feel more like a properly gritty private eye.  He often told Gordon she should whip her own tragic stories out more often, but she definitely preferred her secrets. 

“If you have alibis for the estimated times of the attacks, that could really help us prove your innocence,” Gordon said.  Nobody knew how difficult it was to keep her voice empathetic and understanding when the game was afoot and there were clues that needed finding.  Everything in her screamed to research and solve, to investigate the everloving crap out of things just as efficiently as possible.  Instead, she smiled in what she hoped was a comforting, sisterly way, and added, “Please, tell us everything you know.  Take all the time you need.”

And so the Bat Detective Office of Gordon and Todd set about investigating Poison Ivy’s innocence.  As in most universes, this did indeed involve a bit of acrobat-ish swinging between buildings, their trench coats flapping in the breeze not entirely unlike capes with arm holes.  It also involved some threatening to break bones for information (on the part of Todd,) and plenty of scouring lab results and botany-related texts (on the part of Gordon.)  Still, unlike in most universes, Gordon and Todd’s sweet investigative skills also involved monologuing to themselves in their heads while standing underneath flickering streetlights, and sitting alone in their office with all the lights off, drinking deeply from official Bat Detective Agency flasks.  So it goes.  These were all methods proven to get the job done.

As was par for the course when they were on a case, Todd’s restless nights grew increasingly restless.  Granted, all this happened over maybe a two, three day span, but even so.  He haunted the streets, looking haggard and thinking back to the good old days, before his red hat, before he’d decided it’d be a swell idea to swipe Detective Batman’s Detectivemobile tires and get himself noticed in the first place.  Gordon practiced yoga in the morning and recorded her thoughts in an audio journal at night, saved on the computer she affectionately referred to as “Oracle.” 

The usual.

Everything came together when Gordon got access to a fancy DNA scanner thingy in Detective Batman’s cave-office.  The pair of them shimmied down into the well where he’d been spooked by a bat-swarm as a kid easily enough.   They had their grappling hook ropes, after all, and Todd shimmied extra carefully so he didn’t crush the mug he’d brought for Detective Batman.  It said “World’s Best Dad” with “NOT!” scribbled afterwards in marker.  They shared a lot of weird moments, Detective Batman and Detective Red Hood/Hat.  It was all to do with the _incident_ , and it all made Gordon feel really sad, sometimes…   At least in part because she’d actually gotten that mug for her own dad – without the “NOT!” of course – and now she’d have to think of a different ironic-yet-still-affectionate Father’s Day gift.  Dang Detective Todd, always messing with her stuff.      

The DNA scanner thingy proved Gordon’s hunch correct, as fancy tech usually did – she was just that good, after all.  She explained her findings to Detective Todd in an eager voice with lots of enthusiastic flappy-handed gestures.  Todd was munching on some trail mix helpfully provided by Detective Batman’s butler, the esteemed Alfred Pennyworth, who had opted for a stylish Sherlock Holmes-esque detective hat instead of the more New Jersey-ish fedora.  No one was better than Alfred Pennyworth at the subtle art of whipping out a magnifying glass at the right moment and exclaiming “I say!”

You’ll have to imagine Barbara’s flappy hands for yourself, but what she said was essentially this: true, the vines incriminating Poison Ivy at all the crime scenes had traces of her DNA worked inside them, which meant they’d been made of her own plant-flesh… But they had almost _none_ of her traces as compared to the trophies Detective Batman had saved from previous run ins with the plant-themed eco-terrorist.  Beyond that, the newer vine samples carried only the sides of Poison Ivy that had been warped past humanity, vegetable-ified nearly beyond recognition.  Bits of Pamela Isley’s human side generally remained.

Gasp!  Holy shit, right?

“Right,” Todd said, uncertainly.  “And what’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”  

“It means I know where we’re headed next,” said Gordon, smoothing her flappy hands down and adjusting her hat to make sure the pointy bat ears showed through.  “What was that Poison Ivy said about _tending her gardens_?”               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii~ Thanks for clicking on my story. :P I hope you're liking it so far.
> 
> Some notes about this chapter:  
> \- I really do enjoy the Joker as a character and a symbol, but he doesn't have a lot to do here that's not both awful and somewhat past-tense for this story. :( Sorry.  
> \- The abuse Ivy's referring to comes from "Batman the Animated Series." There are, of course, references to other Batman-y things, but this stuck out as maybe deserving mention.  
> 


	3. The Roots

Throughout the universes upon universes of Gotham Cities stumbling along the winding and impossible map of all dimensions, there were some things that could be rationally called “constants.” 

Harvey Bullock would always have an abiding – sometimes secret – love for both greasy foods and the kind of people that made him feel balanced, for instance.  In most worlds that meant Jim Gordon, Renee Montoya and his cats, yes…  But other worlds led him down far stranger paths.

The Joker would always prefer sharp, chemical scents, as compared to colognes that smelled like the greenery Gotham didn’t really get to see much of under non-supervillain circumstances.  And when he wore said sharp, chemical colognes, he’d always have a tough time determining when enough was _enough_ , if you know what I mean.    

People would always get gunned down in rotting, sour alleys, no matter who they were, where they were going, or even what movie and/or opera they just got finished seeing.

Oh, and that dang city would always somehow manage to hold enough secret, hidden spaces inside to accommodate for all its criminals.  Everybody seemed to have at least two or three secret lairs or stockpiles or laboratories.  Looking at Gotham from above, a blur of car lights and neon signs and rusty, smoke-stained towers of Babel, you might not have thought it could have so _many_ individual secrets.  But it did.  Gotham _always_ did.       

Poison Ivy was one of the big names in criminality, in that particular dimension where Detectives Gordon and Todd were strutting their detective-ing stuff, and so she had plenty of “diabolical botanist bases” scattered around town.  Barbara and Jason had already checked out at least ten spooky greenhouses/experimental labs/out of the way apartment homes before they found _it_. 

That world’s near-constant background soundtrack thrummed low and ominously as they explored each of Poison Ivy’s bases – it sped up with tension-building string instruments whenever they rounded especially dark corners, and it dipped into a whispering murmur as they discussed particularly interesting clues.  Plenty of cape-ish trench coats were swished.  Plenty of fedora-cowls were dipped low, always over appropriately thoughtful gazes.  Harley Quinn came along instead of Poison Ivy herself, for some reason.  She said she’d gotten some weird, cryptic texts from Ivy that morning, saying she should definitely clear her calendar and go hang out with the detectives, making sure to help them out in whatever ways possible.  She’d texted back a lot of hearts and the words, _“Absotively posilutely!”_  

Barbara thought it was kind of cute how eager Harley seemed to help, despite everything.  Strangely cute, sure, but cute nonetheless.  Jason was mostly thinking about how weird it was that their universe’s iPhones even made hearts with little clown faces inside.

“Red _never_ uses emojis,” Harley had remarked, concerning the aforementioned weird, cryptic texts.  “My professional opinion is that she’s spooked, questioning her identity in the wake of all this impersonation mumbo-jumbo… Y’know, reaching out to me and hoping for even _more_ affectionate emojis back as a sign of emotional support.  A confirmation of our bond, and thereby her understanding of self.  That, or she’s been replaced by an eeeeeeevil clone!”  Harley giggled, swiping her phone back on to show off her chat log.  Detective Todd didn’t want to look, but he found himself scanning the sea of hearts and clown faces and sad, droopy looking roses anyway.  “She even called me her _hero_!  See, right there.  That _Red_!  She could charm pretty much anybody, with or without all that pheromone stuff.”          

In truth, Harley had been pretty helpful.  She was the one who pointed out Poison Ivy’s professional journals, detailing her research into the concept of plant consciousness and personality formation.  She’d also demonstrated how dripping a certain combination of plant oils into a specific line of test tubes opened up a movie den with fancy recliner chairs and personalized popcorn flavor combination dispensers.  It would seem Poison Ivy preferred subtle flavorings, where Harley could press a button to get popcorn with gummy bears mixed in.  Gordon noted this dutifully in her hand-sized detective notebook, but she didn’t think it would be especially relevant. 

She was nothing if not methodical.  Jason was nothing if not likely to walk away with at least one of the popcorn dispensers, confiscated as evidence. 

Still, they found _it_ eventually, and _it_ was really what mattered, in the end.  The Under-Garden grew upside down, flowers sprouting wavery and sweet among the roots of a big park in downtown Gotham.  The roots tangled in fans and winding serpent-shapes, like dragons coiled in wait.  The flowers grew in so many fairytale colors and forms, it would’ve been nigh impossible to describe them properly, so it’s lucky enough that they were all reduced to varying shades of grey by the whims of the universe.  Some pulsed with quiet, dreaming light, holding heavy-bright hearts cupped inside them – some fluttered like pixie wings, tattered or curled or dipped in gleaming silver along the edges.  They all seemed to sway, and breathe, a field of flowers gripping on to the world above, roots holding roots.  Growing together. 

“Ah, yes, yes,” Harley Quinn had announced, hands on hips and head tossed back.  She’d remarked more than once that she really should have been provided with her own tour guide hat, and one of those little signs to direct her audience from one exhibit to the next.  “ _This_ is where she turned the world on its head!”

Looking into the sprawling Under-Garden, Gordon found herself nodding a bit, half her lip ticked up in surrender.  Sure, yeah – _the world on its head_.  That made plenty of sense, someplace like Gotham.  Didn’t most Gotham-style villains try to switch the world on its head, in their own occasionally terrifying ways?  Ivy had arranged herself some upside-down park benches and let them become all smothered in greenery; lampposts with shattered glass dangled, swaying, only _just_ holding on to the underside of the earth.  They were getting themselves ready to shatter on the dripping tunnel floor below, any second now, and then there’d be a little less humanity left to clutter up the Under-Garden.  The scene looked like something straight out of what Detective Gordon imagined Poison Ivy’s daydreams must have been like, back when she’d wanted an absolute plant uprising with all of her chlorophyll heart.

And what set Gordon’s detective-ing heart aflutter, more than anything else?  What caused her keen, penetrating eye to zoom in like a camera, ready to calculate and record, eager to scribble down every single godforsaken clue in her official Detective Batman-issue notepad?

It was probably the weird stuff clamped in the too-many fingered grip of the Under-Garden’s grass and weeds that did it.  That was grade-A creepy, and Barbara was an _expert_ on creepy.  Little girls’ shoes were all tangled up in the plant stuffs, abandoned and held upside down as if scooped off in mid-step.  Plenty of things were held tight, up there: sun hats and coloring books and photos grown all water-warped and smudgy in the wet of that place, so you couldn’t quite tell what they were supposed to show.  It was as if the grass _wanted_ them.  As if it held on to them by choice, these thrown-away pieces of humanness.

“Oh, shit,” Harley said, following Detective Gordon’s gaze from piece of spooky ephemera to piece of spooky ephemera.  Maybe she’d noticed the way the universe’s theme music was hurrying up and up and up, building to some kind of ominous crescendo.  “That’s Ivy’s actual _phone_ , there.  I know ‘cause I put all those great stickers on it.”            

“Try calling her,” Detective Todd suggested.  He imagined he looked really hardboiled, scowling up at all the Under-Garden’s prettiness like it was just a bunch of dandelions wilting by the side of the road.  Nothing special at all.  It was too bad he couldn’t storm right through the flowers, he thought, but a detective couldn’t exactly choose where mysterious plant ladies decided to grow their gardens upside down. 

Harley tried, rocking back and forth on her heels so her pigtails bounced.  She was a restless one, Todd thought, always seeming fidgety where Ivy herself held so, so still – when she wasn’t coming at you with a bunch of writhing vines and fingernails like bloody thorns, of course.  The clown girl shook her head after a minute, though, and offered a big old pantomime shrug.  “No signal.  Red doesn’t believe in setting up special wi-fi for _all_ her secret tunnels.”     

And so Jason decided – why not? – that he’d climb up one of the rickety lamp posts and grab the phone himself.  It was probably loaded with clues.  On one hand, the theme music was definitely warning him that this was a _terrible idea._   On the other hand, when Detective Gordon laughed and said, “Oh my god, Jason – that’s not gonna work, though,” he really _had_ to prove her wrong.  It was the principle of the thing. 

Detective Todd actually did make it pretty far, dangling from the topsy-turvy world of the Under-Garden like he was monkeying along a jungle gym.  If you caught him in an easygoing mood, and without his serious business detective hat, Jason might have told you he’d been king of the jungle gym back in his playground days.  Maybe not much at flips, not compared to Mr. Circus Boy Detective Nightwing, but…  A king where it mattered, which was holding on tight, no matter what.  Like a pit bull.  But with jungle gyms.  Or the helter-skelter stolen park stuff being mysteriously gripped by the plants of the Under-Garden.  Same thing.

Jason got so close, in fact, that his hand was nearly curling right over Poison Ivy’s sticker-plastered phone when the _other_ hand formed out of wriggling weeds and grabbed his wrist tight.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii~ I hope the story is amusing you! I included a bunch of headcanons/personal interpretations in this one.... I hope I did okay.


	4. The Clippers

Wait --

Hello?  Hey there, hello?

Are you there, reader?

The screen of the cosmos cut out into a jarring pit of darkness there for a second, which must mean dear Detective Todd getting his hand grabbed by an upside-down garden beneath Gotham City was just the kind of game changer that required a commercial break.  That’s when you know things are really getting serious, across a remarkable number of universes.  Perhaps even the one you’re in now.  

When the world cleared, fading back into focus after its logo dutifully unfolded across eternity, Jason’s arm was still caught by some grabby weeds and Detective Gordon was mysteriously craving tortilla chips.  She would have to pick some up with the emergency cash stored in her Detective Belt on the way back to the office.

Detective Todd promptly whipped out one of his many contraband guns – the same guns that Detective Batman kept trying to confiscate and melt down to make various other weapons… Say, some handy fedora-with-bat-wings shaped razor sharp projectiles, for instance.  Anybody could see those were cooler and far more hardboiled than lousy old guns any day. 

So _then_ Detective Todd was hanging on with his feet – as he truly was Jungle Gym Champion, it could not be denied – but before he could threaten the garden with bullet holes Barbara said, “Jason, you trigger happy…!  Please hold still and _watch_.”          

And because despite his hurt, and despite his hat that wasn’t a hood and would never look properly red in that universe, Jason did, in fact, respect Barbara Gordon, he stopped.  And he held still.  And he watched.

And what he watched would’ve been weird as hell in most other cities.  But this was Gotham, dammit.  Honestly, Todd said, _“Oh good,”_ under his breath, and not _“Oh God,”_ like Harley Quinn ended up telling people later.  He was pretty relieved it was _this_ sort of weirdness going on, and not something like what the freaking Doom Patrol might have to fight.

A woman was forming out of the plants, you see, vines squirming together until she was bent with her hand clamped over Jason’s wrist.  The flowery tendrils of her hair moved in strange, winding ways, like snakes, or like they were drifting languidly underwater.  She looked like Poison Ivy – wearing a plant-ish approximation of one of Ivy’s eco-terrorist costumes, even – but somehow softer.  Younger.  Her cheeks were just that little bit rounder, her smile just that little bit wider. 

“Holy crap!  Where’s the actual Red, though?!  Who even are you, stealin’ her phone or whatever?!” Harley Quinn demanded, one of those guns that fired dynamite harpoons labeled “Boom” (instead of the Joker’s more traditional “Bang,” get it?) already leveled at the plant woman’s head.     

“She’s with me, just as always,” the woman formed out of the Under-Garden said.  “I am created of Pamela Isley’s best self, just as you three are created of sticky, smeary ‘human’ liquids and ‘bones’ that snap far more easily than tree trunks.”

Now, in most universes, it’s generally impolite to tell someone that you’re better than them.  Plenty of fistfights and galactic conquering attempts have sprung from wheedling, little voices just like the Under-Garden’s there.  She didn’t sound cruel, not exactly.  Her eyes were huge and bright, lit like the flowers, pulsing with what felt like thought, but… Barbara Gordon rationally knew… Was actually a means to attract certain kinds of Gotham-bred pollinizing insects.  Still, she sounded sure.  Quietly, unnervingly confident.  She was Poison Ivy’s best self, and yet the woman who had tended this garden, who had planted her here, sounded almost like something disposable.       

Harley Quinn was clearly conflicted about all this.  “So you’re her ‘Daughter,’” she breathed, first.  “The Under-Garden.  Well, I’ll be damned and… And employed by freaking Kite Man.  You’re beautiful.”  But then she shook her head, and leveled the “Boom” gun once more.  “Seriously, though – _Red_.  Poison Ivy.  Did you wrap her up or, or smother her or something?”

“It’s okay, Dr. Quinzel,” Barbara Gordon said, voice low and urgent.  “I know what happened.  We have to… Miss Under-Garden, if you’d just let my associate go, I promise we won’t –”  

Alright, and now for some background stuff that you would have noticed, surely, if you were like most visitors to this particular universe and, therefore, watching it on the enormous cosmic television that was all known things.  While the Under-Garden had been introducing herself, and Jason Todd had been discreetly injecting her vines with a little of a Poison Ivy-specific plant numbing agent so he could carve his way out of her grip with a fedora-batarang if it came to that… Which he was pretty sure it _would_ come to that, though of course Barbara being freaking Barbara she had to ask for his release nicely first…  Detective Gordon had realized two things.  Firstly, if Harley’s cellphone didn’t have reception, there was a pretty good chance her Detective-Communicators didn’t either.  Not until she switched them to Special Detective Mode, which she didn’t like to use given it was a huge power drain and prohibited iTunes access or anything Detective Batman deemed “frivolities.”  Secondly, now that she had her Detective-Communicators up and running in Special Detective Mode, she was getting live footage and commentary from Detective Batman about Poison Ivy rampaging through the city. 

Ivy's eyes had been replaced with flowers, of course.  They pulsed, steady and straight out of a fairy tale, fresh from the Under-Garden.  

Did you see it coming?  Jason would say later that he _definitely_ had, but Barbara would always, always doubt him.      

Poison Ivy’s rampage was the sort that sent thorns the size of large dogs erupting out of the streets, that turned apartment buildings into redwoods, that had clouded the air with a million tiny spores that could sneak their way inside just about anybody and leave them coughing up blood and roses.  Detective Batman had been busy evacuating civilians and administering antidotes just as quickly as the Detectivemobile could hurtle him from one side of the city to another.  He was getting pretty cross.

“You know what happened?  Everything?” the Under-Garden smiled.  Her nose wrinkled up very prettily, in a way so like Poison Ivy’s that it tore at a certain clown girl’s heart.  “Then why would you want to leave, just yet?  Why would you ever want to stop it?”                                   

“Jason…” said Barbara softly.

“Welp.  There’s my cue,” said Jason Todd, in a tone that he’d clearly borrowed from the illustrious Detective Nightwing.  He swiped a fedora-batarang through the Under-Garden’s twisting-vine hand and flipped himself down to the right-side-up world.  It’s true he didn’t stick the landing quite the way Detective Nightwing would have, but he was good at pretending he didn’t know that.   

“Oh,” breathed the Under-Garden, massaging the coiling vines of her arm until they reformed into perfect new fingers.  Her voice was so much rustling grass, so much wind howling through old and creaking branches.  It was still sweet, somehow.  A girl’s voice.  A daughter’s.  “I’ve been watching you fiddle with your little screen down there, with your Detective Batman and your Above-Streets.  You don’t understand at all, do you?  Wonder and magic – that’s me.  Pamela Isley’s hurting _changed_ her, the way a human can be changed… But a plant cannot.  She always told me she wanted to be better than she is, to make the world right, somehow.  It’s only fair that she gets the chance to become me.  If she is off the streets for good, I can rise up – I can replace her, and she will never sour our work with her hurting.  I will be the force we were meant to be.  It’s good.  It will be so good, so good.  It won’t be long, now.  Cures and healings.  A clearer sky.  It won’t be long at all.”

“But she’s your creatrix,” said Harley Quinn, eyes narrowing.  Her psychiatrist voice crept back out from behind the clown girl’s.  They bowed to each other, those disparate voices, and formed together into something lilting and sharp, something strange and Harley Quinn’s alone.  “She’s your mother – she told me, on a few different occasions, how much she treasured you.”

 _“The Under-Garden’s gotten Poison Ivy to target the Iceberg Lounge and the Scarecrow’s latest Nest,”_ Gordon typed to Todd on their handy Detective-Communicators.  _They’re both coming for her – hard.  We don’t have much time.”_  

“I see what you’re typing there,” the Under-Garden smiled.  “Did you forget that all this pretty world forms together into my eyes?” 

And then, everything happened all too quickly – what was soft and gentle about the Under-Garden, fluttering in an unreal breeze, grew ragged and sharp.  Her thorns were a hundred thousand teeth, her vines all searching arms, hurtling down to grab up Detective Todd’s neck, knocking loose his infamous Red Hood/Hat.  She smashed Detective Gordon’s Communicator, which sucked because it’d be a real pain in the ass to download everything back on to it.  She dug her thorns in deep wherever they struck.  It was all Barbara could do to slash her so-many arms away from Jason’s neck with a few deft fedora-batarangs  – he fell heavily, wheezing out profanities in what he hoped was a hardboiled way.  The air was thick with glowing spores, dancing like fairy lights. 

Jason whipped out his convenient mini-blowtorch – which he always kept on him just in case, because he was supremely dark and edgy and also Detective Batman hadn’t managed to destroy it yet – but it was no use.  Vines were sprouting from the deepest insides of that thing, and it wouldn’t even click on.  It was dead as Jason had been, once.  Dead as his poor, fallen “Red Hood.”

Only Harley Quinn remained untouched, not even fighting, but just sort of standing off to the side and looking frustrated and sad.  Finally, after watching the two Bat Detectives struggling not to die for a while, she said, “Okay fellas, looks like I’m gonna have to whip out my Therapist Hat.”  She meant an actual hat, you know, in that universe – and many others.  Just because it had jingle bells on it didn’t make it any less appropriate for therapist work.     

And so Detective Gordon and Detective Todd hacked their way out of the wriggling vine-arms and smoothed down their trench coats…  As Harley Quinn tried valiantly to explain the nature of humanity’s complexity to a sentient upside-down garden in order to help her come to terms with her supervillain mom.  The Under-Garden was practically a supervillain herself, don’t ya know?  By that point, what with all the murder and the city-wide devastation in her mother’s name.  Sure, it was for some kind of “greater good,” but didn’t people always say that?  Barbara and Jason successfully snuck away just as the Under-Garden was explaining how she collected fancy shoes and sunhats and library books because she’d never gotten to grow up like a normal girl, but always sort of yearned to.  They peppered her park – her skin – her world – the way they might have been strewn across a bedroom floor.  Harley was saying something like, “And do the stolen items make you feel more like a person?”  And the Under-Garden was whimpering, “Yes!  Whatever _that_ feels like!” as all her flowers dripped glimmering petals like so many tears. 

“Holy shit, right?” whistled Detective Todd.  “Hey, lend me your hat.  I can’t be seen without a _hat_.”

Detective Gordon sighed.  “Fine,” she said.  “But only because you almost died.”

 If we were following slower, less intrepid Detective Bat-People, Jason and Barbara might not have made it in time to save Poison Ivy from the combined wrath of the Penguin and Scarecrow and the Gotham City Police Department.  But they did.  It involved a lot of fedora-batarangs thrown just right to plug up guns, and a lot of leaping off buildings saying very cool one-liners which unbelievers could easily confuse for terrible puns.  At one point, Detective Todd cut the vines holding an innocent gaggle of schoolchildren with some hedge clippers he’d swiped off an old lady’s porch.  It was definitely a very heroic and serious moment, and didn’t involve Jason threatening to melt the hedge clippers down into fedora-batarangs at all.  He didn’t tell them that he hated their metal guts even once, let alone repeatedly.  The theme music was soaring and dramatic.  The world only dissolved into static once or twice. 

All and all, it was a stunning victory, because the Under-Garden sucked her flower-eyes back into Poison Ivy’s sockets and dropped her like a doll before anybody managed to kill her.  She got handed over nice and safe – back to Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, you know.  But would you believe she _wanted_ it that way?

Her conversation with Detective Gordon went something like this:

Poison Ivy: “Oh, my little love.  _She_ did this?”    

Barbara: “The Under-Garden.  Your… Best self?"

Poison Ivy: “I thought maybe I shouldn’t have called her that.  I shouldn’t have made so many promises.”

Barbara: “The Under-Garden –”

Poison Ivy: “Shh!  Not so loud!  They’ll catch her.”

Barbara: “If you reveal her hand in this, you’ll still get time in Arkham, for sure, but maybe not as… As _horrible_ time?  Maybe not as long?”

Poison Ivy: “No.  No.  My daughter stays in the secret dark as long as she can.  She stays innocent… And safe… As long as she can.  You must understand -- this is a special circumstance.  She couldn't have understood.”

Barbara:  “She’s still going in our threat books – we’re keeping an eye on her, Ivy.  The whole Bat Detective Agency.  You _know_ what that means.”

Poison Ivy: “Thank you, Detective Batgirl.  It’s better this way, don’t you think?”

And Barbara said nothing, then.  In a way, it was better she didn’t – it was better she stayed cupped in the hollow, watery light of a streetlamp, staring at the mossy Arkham vans carting Poison Ivy away.   

And there, with the bittersweet notes of unresolved tension and threats yet to come dangling in the air of that world, that world with all its old, battered neon and its black-and-white TV sunsets, we’re left with only one thing.

We’re left with

V.

The Finale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- I got Harley Quinn's "Boom" dynamite thing from "Harley Quinn: Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes" by Karl Kesel. Maybe it's been more places, too? I'm honestly not sure atm!! Probably?  
> \-- I really hope this twist isn't disappointing. :P  
> \-- Thanks for your patience with my weird story. Hahahaa.


	5. The Finale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to add both of the final chapters at the same time! 
> 
> I really hope you enjoy/enjoyed this story~ Thanks for sticking around to the last chapter.

The case Alfred Pennyworth would later playfully dub “Once Upon a Murderous Hedge” ended softly, with Detectives Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon plodding home in stained trench coats with leaves stuck to their cowls.  They picked up some tortilla chips for Barbara, and Jason was pretty bummed to find out the popcorn dispenser he’d liberated from Poison Ivy had been crushed by all those pesky vines. 

They returned to their office, to the low hum of Barbara’s constantly updating crime database computer, to the slit blinds that left just the right amount of smoky shadows.  Jason popped a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it.  Detective Batman hated smoking, and as much as he wanted to look angry, to defy his former mentor and pick fights… In the end, Jason wanted to matter far more than he’d ever wanted to be hardboiled and badass and sit with his feet propped up on a stained desk as a curvy dame came striding in with a case to crack.  He hadn’t confessed that to anybody, but Barbara knew.  She was a Bat Detective, after all.  _And_ she’d read some of the angsty poetry lines Jason scribbled on napkins in appropriately seedy diners.

The truth was, Barbara felt a little like Detective Todd’s big sister, some days.  Bigger by a couple years, and always kind of hesitant to babysit him for Detective Batman back in the day, but like… Still.  Watching Jason pound at the busted popcorn machine, a bruise forming where the Under-Garden’s vines had grabbed his neck, an unlit cigarette growing soggy on his lip, Barbara felt like it might be one of those days.

“It’s been some night,” she said, pouring fresh-brewed coffee into her Bat Detective flask so she could drink it leaning back in her chair and looking just as brooding as she had been trained.  “You look pissed off, now, though.”

“Didn’t get to shoot anything,” grunted Jason.  That wasn’t the problem, really, and they both knew it.  The problem was the lost Red Hood/Hat.  The problem was he was gonna go buy another Red Hood/Hat just as soon as the shops opened back up.  Just as soon as he could.

“It’s nearly light,” Barbara said.  “Shooting range should be opening soon.”

Jason perked up, something of his trademark fire in his eyes.  This _was_ the kind of guy who had a special flamethrower strap on his Detective Belt.  This _was_ the kind of guy who wanted to be a wild card, wanted to be an outlaw.  At least he thought he did.  At least sometimes.  “Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Barbara.  “Maybe this time you’ll actually come close to beating my record.”

And then the old, wobbly video camera that was reality leaned back, a bit, to show us the Gordon and Todd detective office from outside.  A crossword puzzle all filled in with upcoming Riddler-y schemes blew by, held up to the brick wall by the wind for just a moment before tumbling on.  Killer Croc’s eye passed quietly along in the dark of a storm drain, silently golden and huge and knowing.  Stories would come, and mysteries with them, and that’s the way most every episode has to end in that world.

End scene.

Fade to crackly-static black.

The universe’s snappy logo unfolds, just as ever, before the credits.


End file.
